<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'I have no one.',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/06/05.jpg" alt="A local park" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I strongly agree with your assessment that most people are incredibly short-sighted.
			It always baffles me how poorly people plan for the future and how much damage they&apos;re willing to do without even thinking about it, just because they don&apos;t have to deal with the consequences right away.
			Ingraining a sense of responsibility in citizens is incredibly important, and I&apos;m amazed that Curitiba managed to pull that off.
			From the sounds of it, they <strong>*fear*</strong> a reversion.
			They don&apos;t want to go back.
			They want their city to remain as sustainable as it is now, which is much more than we can say about almost any other city on the globe.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="driving">
	<h2>Driving</h2>
	<p>
		I was told I wouldn&apos;t need a driving permit to take driver education courses.
		It turns out that because the state no longer has any courses in the area though, all courses are provided through private companies.
		These private companies don&apos;t have special privileges, as well they shouldn&apos;t, so they can&apos;t take people out on the road without permits.
		I do, in fact, need a permit and mine&apos;s about to expire.
	</p>
	<p>
		There are a couple places in Eugene offering courses, but there seems to be only one here in Springfield.
		That makes them the only feasible choice.
		They charge \$110 $a[USD] per hour and half instruction session.
		According to the person I spoke with, seeing as I have absolutely no way to practice at home, seeing as I&apos;d need a license to even buy a motor vehicle, I&apos;ll need a minimum of four sessions.
		Between the fact that people give low estimates to get you to choose their business over others (not that choosing another option would be feasible anyway, not that they&apos;d take that into consideration) and the fact that everything always goes wrong, I&apos;m operating under the assumption that I&apos;ll need at least a fifth lesson, if not more.
		So by current estimate, it&apos;s going to take almost my full pay cheque to cover this.
		Joy.
		If I&apos;m wrong, nothing lost, but if I&apos;m right, there&apos;ll be no horrible surprise.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I went in, I was also operating under the assumption that I&apos;d need to meet them at their office for the lessons.
		As it turns out, they normally pick people up at their homes.
		However, they arrange pickups via telephone.
		Even if I had telephone service, which I don&apos;t, I&apos;d try to get them to let me meet them at their office just to avoid telephone calls.
		I hate the telephone system so much.
		But yeah.
		So they said I&apos;d need to meet them at their office, &apos;cause apparently they can&apos;t be bothered to simply show up on time, which would mean the time would be known, the person they were picking up could be ready, and no telephone call would even be needed.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="sewing">
	<h2>Sewing machine</h2>
	<p>
		This sewing machine is terrible.
		I finally got a chance to try a second repair with it, but it doesn&apos;t have enough power and just stops if it encounters a thick spot in the fabric.
		That makes it completely inadequate for repairing shorts and pants, and it seems I&apos;ve ripped my only functioning pair of black pants for work.
		I always rip them near the seam, so there&apos;s <strong>*going*</strong> to be a thick spot in the form of the original seam of the shorts.
		If I can&apos;t repair my clothing with it, what good is this sewing machine to me?
		I wish I&apos;d had time to discover this flaw early on, so I could&apos;ve returned it to the store.
	</p>
	<p>
		It ended up taking me about an hour to repair just one pair of my work shorts by hand.
		I&apos;ll have to mend the other pair later.
		At least it gave me time to rest my legs after two bike trips before work.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="support">
	<h2>No support network</h2>
	<p>
		I arrived at work in a downcast mood.
		My original supposed driving-instructor-to-be asked what the problem was; I claimed to be fine.
		I wasn&apos;t going to dump my problem on them, despite them eating five months of my time and leaving me in the corner I&apos;ve been backed into now.
		Their harm to me wasn&apos;t that they didn&apos;t have time for me, of course.
		It was never their job to help me.
		What the did to me though was lie to me.
		If they were just honest from the beginning and told me they weren&apos;t going to make time for me, I&apos;d already be out of this stupid job now.
		I&apos;d be happier, I&apos;d be less stressed, and I&apos;d be making more money.
		I&apos;d&apos;ve had time too to look into options, and not stuck using the only commercial driving instructor within quick reach.
		I&apos;d have time, for example, to bike to Eugene to compare prices with the instructors there, and time to attend lessons in Eugene if they were more affordable.
		Also, like I said, I&apos;d be making more money.
		I&apos;d be more easily able to afford this expense.
	</p>
	<p>
		My one-time driving instructor was there too though, and piped up, claiming I was just tired from the commute by bicycle.
		It was never my intent to explain my funk; I was still in plenty good condition to do my job.
		However, I wasn&apos;t going to let my sour mood be blamed on cycling, either.
		So I explained that one pay cheque this month will be going to driving instructors, and the other towards rent.
		I got just about no response.
		I mean, they didn&apos;t ignore me, but they didn&apos;t acknowledge that they could&apos;ve saved me from this, or at least leave me with enough time that I could do this little by little (not that they knew this wasn&apos;t a lump sum I have to pay).
		I said money will be very tight this month.
	</p>
	<p>
		Of course, I was probing for some sort of acknowledgement that they&apos;d ended up blowing me off and screwing me over.
		I actually have enough money saved up that I&apos;m not going to starve or anything, not to mention that I have at least a bit of stockpiled food.
		Come to think of it, if they were honest with me from the start so I didn&apos;t wait for them, I&apos;d be able to have earned the bonus cash from my credit card through paying for these lessons.
		I wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve even <strong>*needed*</strong> to blow money on stockpiling food.
	</p>
	<p>
		I spent most of the work day just flabbergasted by my situation, not able to process any of it in any productive way.
		In the final three-hour stretch though, I started actually getting somewhere.
		First, I thought about how unreliable everyone is.
		You just can&apos;t count on anyone to do what they promise.
		You&apos;re on your own.
		The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was just me.
		<strong>*I&apos;m*</strong> on my own; I have no support network!
		When I lived with my mother, she tore me down too much to be in any state to make friends.
		I&apos;m away from there now, but I don&apos;t have the network most people would&apos;ve already built by now.
		I don&apos;t have a single person I can count on.
	</p>
	<p>
		Y&apos;know, I lent my supposed driving-instructor-to-be money twice when they were in a tight spot.
		I only mentioned the first time in my journal, but there was a second time too.
		I charged no interest, of course.
		They tried to over-pay me the second time as thanks, but I declined.
		I didn&apos;t lend them the money to try to start my support network or anything, but I did think that it&apos;d helped me do just that.
		I thought they&apos;d help me in return, but now it&apos;s become clear that it was always one-sided.
		Of course, this has only deepened my trust issues.
		By the end of the night, I realised just how bad my situation is as far as building a network.
		I work minimum wage.
		The people here are unreliable; messed up in some way.
		That&apos;s why we&apos;re here: we&apos;re so messed up we&apos;re not fit for better work.
		I like to think I&apos;ve gotten better over the past couple years, after having escaped my noxious home life with my mother.
		I was trying to escape this job too, back in January.
		I only stayed because I&apos;d been lied to, told they&apos;d make time to teach me to drive.
		I&apos;m not going to find reliable people though as long as I&apos;m here.
		I cannot even begin to build a support network at a minimum-wage job.
		That&apos;s not to say I can&apos;t build a network while I work here, I just would need to do it outside of work.
		And with school taking too much time, especially as the school is toxic as well, I don&apos;t really have time outside of work.
		If I can get to a better, less toxic job though ... I won&apos;t have as much toxicity in my life, and maybe I&apos;ll be able to fit other things in.
		I wouldn&apos;t mind getting to join the local <a href="https://euglug.org/">Unix and Linux user group</a> over in Eugene, for example.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
